Today, Thursday, July 16, 2015, Google is honoring the 153rd birthday of civil rights activist, suffragist and journalist, Ida B. Wells, with a Doodle of her typing away on typewriter with a piece of luggage by her side.

In a tribute to Wells, Google wrote, “She was a fierce opponent of segregation and wrote prolifically on the civil injustices that beleaguered her world. By twenty-five she was editor of the Memphis-based Free Speech and Headlight, and continued to publicly decry inequality even after her printing press was destroyed by a mob of locals who opposed her message.”

Did you Know?

Ida B. Wells credits Rev. Robert Nelson Countee, the great-grandfather of Los Angeles Valley College President Emeritus and previous Interim Chancellor, Dr. Tyree Wieder, for beginning her career in journalism. See the quote below from the book, “They Say: Ida B. Wells and the Reconstruction of Race” by James West Davidson:

“When Ida B. Wells first sued the C&O in the winter of 1883-1884 Memphis minister Rev. Robert N. Countee was in the process of launching a black newspaper, the Living Way. The opportunity to be published was gratifying, if only a small step up from Wells’ occasional essays for the Memphis Lyceum. What made the crucial difference was that Countee sent the Living Way to a number of nonlocal subscribers, including T. Thomas Fortune, a sharp-eyed editor of another black paper, the New York Globe.”

How great it to have a personal LACCD connection with the “fearless and uncompromising” Ida B. Wells!